Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Walkthrough & Strategy Guide

This battle is actually really, really easy, as long as you utilize the right tactics. Otherwise, Malphas can take you to the mat rather quickly. Here's the rub. Malphas will fly around the outer circumference of the tower's rooftop, staying far away from you. You won't be able to damage her conventionally... not yet, at least. Instead, you're going to have to utilize a little patience, constantly moving to avoid her stream of crows (which will mildly damage you and stymie your movements), while waiting for her to execute the one move that will leave her entirely susceptible to an initial onslaught of damage.

Malphas is the Crow Witch, and obviously, the crow is a bird. Birds lay eggs, and the Crow Witch is no different. The difference between Malphas and a normal bird, however, is the fact that Malphas doesn't have much regard for her offspring. Her eggs are extremely strong, so she will hurl them at you without a second thought. This is your chance to act. Remember when we fought the Titan earlier, hurling rocks back at him? Well, you're going to do the same thing here with Malphas, but you're going to have to be much, much quicker about it. Malphas will throw three (and sometimes four, though not often) eggs at you. Grapple onto the first and use the left analog stick to fling it back, identically to how you flung the rocks back at the Titan earlier on. The two other eggs after that will likely land, but you may be able to launch another egg back, scoring twice as much damage.

Either way, the eggs that weren't flung back at Malphas to damage the bird will spawn Malphas' offspring known as Witch Children. These guys are a bona fide pain in the butt. Fairies will help even the odds on them when you fight them if you are having trouble. Otherwise, focus on a single target at a time and obliterate them quickly, dodging their devastating fire attacks, and staying far enough away from them that they don't attempt incessant physical strikes. When they are felled, Malphas will again launch eggs at you, and will continue to do so until you damage it about halfway. At this point, the battle changes.

Malphas will fall to the edge of the circular arena of battle, and will start glowing. You know now that this is your cue to grapple on for a quick event. When you do, Malphas will stream up into the sky with you on its back, and you'll need to follow a simple on-screen prompt to ram its head back into the tower. Once that's done, quickly walk up to its stunned body and attack it some more to damage it. Now, with half of its health gone, you'll have to repeat this entire process one more time. There's no real difference the second time around. All that's different is that once the bird is smashed into the tower again, you'll be able to attack it until its health is all gone, at which point Gabriel will be beckoned to latch his whip onto its head. Follow the prompts from there, and Gabriel will pull the head off of the Crow Witch, effectively killing it.

Trial

This trial is easy to complete, so long as you're quick in dealing with Malphas' eggs. Basically, you have to defeat Malphas in the way described in the previous paragraphs while killing no more than two of her offspring, the Witch Children. The only real way around this is to be sure that no more than two eggs collide with the tower. That's because Malphas won't spring into throwing more eggs until the Witch Children she's already deployed have been killed... or never spawned at all. The latter is the key here. The good news is that a checkpoint activates right before the fight begins, so you can always restart from there if you're having difficulty.